This column is not Parker's Hurricane Katrina

2:39 AM,
Nov. 22, 2013

Kathleen Parker

Written by

Kathleen
PARKER

Simile, to refresh memories, is a favorite rhetorical device of writers that compares two essentially unlike things that nonetheless have similar characteristics: The quarterback was like a locomotive.

Sui generis, the Latin phrase meaning unique or one of a kind, is a helpful restraint upon the former. Some things, even if they share certain characteristics, shouldn't be compared. Sui generis is the braking system on a rhetorical locomotive, or at least it should be. That was a metaphor, by the way, and not a very good one. ...